환경평가 지원을 위한 지역 환경현황분석 시스템 구축 및 운영 = Analysis System for Regional Environmental Status to Support Environmental Assessment

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The Korea Environment Institute (KEI) has been committed to the development and dissemination of professional review and evaluation techniques of environmental impact assessment through the operation of the Environmental Assessment Group in order enhance the professionalism and impartiality of Environmental Impact Assessment(EIA), which is one of the missions of the Institute. However, the current environmental assessment system is limited to the prediction and analysis of environmental status of individual project and plan and there is a limit in conducting a scientific and comprehensive evaluation reflecting the considerations of the differences in local environmental capacity and effect of temporal and spatial changes in environmental factors. Thus, the KEI Environmental Assessment Group rather than merely collecting data needs to operate a constant analysis system to examine the feasibility of development plans based on the analysis of environmental changes in the atmosphere, ecosystem, water quality and topography and future prediction during the review of strategic environmental assessment and environmental impact assessment. Therefore, this study aims to determine the environmental status across the nation by region and to establish an analysis system to assess the adequacy of future development plans. To that end during the first year, we performed analysis required for the environmental assessment of air quality and ecosystem. < Air quality > The objective of this study is to provide objective data for policy adjustments that can contribute to effectively improving air quality by operating air quality analysis system for existing and planned sources and in-advance assessment system to evaluate the impact of regional atmospheric effects in accordance with development plan. In this regard, we examined the air quality impacts of thermal power plants that are currently under operation as well as those scheduled for operation according to the 6th Basic Plan on Electricity Demand and Supply and evaluate the impact on public health by estimating early death toll in order to analyze the impact of the energy projects that have one of the greatest impact on air quality. A study on the air quality impact found that the operation of domestic thermal power plants including the ones planned on the 6th Basic Plan on Electricity Demand and Supply will result in a maximum of 24.56../.... (accounting for 49% of air quality standards) of PM2.5 and up to 94.269ppb in case of O3 concentration (accounting for 157% of air quality standards). In particular, the 8hr O3 maximum contribution level of Gangwon region showed a maximum of 11.74ppb or about 20% air quality standards due to the impact of thermal power plants planned under the 6th Basic Plan on Electricity Demand and Supply, which raises the need for counter-measures. As a result of health impact assessments on the operation of thermal power plants including the ones planned on the 6th Basic Plan on Electricity Demand and Supply, early deaths associated with the increase in PM2.5 was found to be 1,144 which means 34,320 premature deaths can occur when considering the power plants’ useful life of 30years. As air pollution is a broad-based issue affected by atmospheric conditions and chemical reactions, impact assessment on individual projects cannot ensure practical air quality management and preemptive management. Therefore it is necessary to manage the amount of generated air pollutants based on regional air quality analysis and to that end, measures should be taken to differentiate the air pollutant emission standards by region. Through the next year’s research, the plan is to complete the development feasibility evaluation systems by performing analysis of regional emission densities and additionally permissible emission amounts. < Ecosystem > Remote sensing techniques are being utilized in a wide range of fields as one of the effective methods for monitoring environment status. The benefit of using satellite images in monitoring the water environment of rivers and lakes is the ability to quickly identify the cause of problem and scale of damage. Satellite imagery has been actively used in other countries and the applicability of remote sensing techniques in water environmental monitoring has been sought by researchers in South Korea. The possibility of using satellite images as a tool for monitoring water environmental problems that occur in river or water resource development projects has been confirmed. In the ecology section of this study, we conducted research on air quality monitoring using near-infrared images of satellite data by assuming that data extracted from near-infrared images can be used to estimate plankton concentration, based on which algae status of water bodies can also be identified. Anomalies were identified by employing remote sensing techniques on the Nakdong river area where public’s attention has been brought on by the appearance of algae over a wide range after the Four Major Rivers Restoration Project. We compared the video information obtained from satellite images and water quality measurement data provided by public agencies and confirmed that there is a correlation between the values extracted from satellite images and on-site observations at the time of algae’s manifestation. Based on these results, we have confirmed the possibility of using remote sensing techniques in water quality monitoring while the limitations of remote sensing techniques were also confirmed and presented.